"I would rescue," Claire began sweetly, "my family members, global peace, and the fire extinguisher."

I sighed. Claire and I had a lot of work to do. But I didn't mind. It kept me from thinking about what was going to happen that evening.

Chapter 12.

Claire and I talked and talked about how to answer those questions. I decided she was in pretty good shape when I said to her, "How could you change the world to make it a better place?" and she replied, "I would help everybody get to be friends and I would give them all free French fries at McDonald's."

Close enough.

Anyway, it was 5:30 and time to go home.

I said good-bye to the Pikes and walked home with as much enthusiasm as if I were walking to my own execution.

"Jeff?" I called as I entered our house.

"Hi! Hi, Dawn! I'm upstairs!"

Jeff was ecstatic and I was a mess.

I went up to Jeff's room and looked around. Jeff was sitting on his bed, grinning. (He'd been grinning for days.) His room looked the way it did right after we'd moved in and hadn't unpacked yet: bare. Most of his things had been put in trunks or cartons and shipped back to California. All that remained was a suitcase full of the clothes he'd been wearing the past few days and a knapsack that he was going to take with him on the plane that night. It contained a couple of books, a Transformer, his Walkman, some tapes, and a few things I could categorize only as junk.

Jeff was sitting on his bed looking through a pile of colorful papers.

"What's all that?" I asked him.

"Good-bye cards," he replied. "Ms. Besser gave me a going-away party today, and everyone in my cla.s.s had made a card for me. It was their homework last night. Ms. Besser a.s.signed it while I was in the boys' room yesterday. The party was a surprise."

"That was really nice of Ms. Besser," I said.

"I think she's glad to get rid of me."

I looked at the cards. They all said things like, GOOD-BYE, JEFF, and GOOD LUCK, JEFF, and I'LL MISS YOU, JEFF.

My curiosity overcame me. "Where's Jerry Haney's card?" I asked.

Jeff sorted through the pile and handed one to me. On the front it said simply GOOD-BYE, JEFF. But inside, in the middle of a complicated drawing, in letters so tiny Ms. Besser wouldn't have noticed them, were the words AND GOOD RIDDANCE.

"I'm taking all the cards with me - except Jerry's," Jeff told me. I watched him tear Jerry's card to bits and throw the pieces in his trash can.

"Hi! I'm home!" called my mother's voice.

"Hi, Mom," Jeff and I replied automatically.

"Come on downstairs," she said. "We have to eat an early, fast dinner."

"Okay!" I shouted.

"Dawn, can you carry my knapsack?" Jeff asked as he stuffed the cards in it. "I'm all packed. I might as well take my stuff downstairs when we go."

Jeff didn't even give his room a good-bye glance as he left it. Maybe boys don't care about those things. ... Or maybe Jeff hated his life in Connecticut so much that he didn't want to remember it.

Jeff's last dinner with us was leftovers. "Sorry," said Mom, "but it's the fastest kind of dinner to have. I want to leave for the airport in forty-five minutes."

"I can't believe you're letting me take a night flight," Jeff commented happily as he shoveled in a forkful of reheated brown rice.

"I can't, either," said my mother. "But I think it's the easiest way for you to go, in terms of jet lag. You'll leave here around nine - "

"I know, I know. And arrive at eleven o'clock California time."

"Right. You can sleep a little on the plane, and you'll still be able to get in a pretty good night's sleep in California."

"That is, if Dad and I don't stop to do something fun."

Mom and I exchanged a glance. "Jeff," Mom said seriously, "don't expect life with your dad to be like your vacation with him."

"I won't," he replied. But he still looked awfully excited.

Didn't he have even mixed feelings about leaving Mom and me? Didn't some tiny part of him think, Gosh, I'm going to miss Mom and my sister?

I had a feeling that the answer to both questions was no. And I was very, very hurt.

That night we didn't bother to do the dishes. We just cleared the table and put everything in the sink. Mom was nervous about the drive to the airport. "You never know about traffic jams," she said.

We were on the road before 7:00.

I let Jeff sit up front with Mom. 1 figured she'd have last-minute things to say to him like, "Obey Dad," or "Don't forget to lock the door if you use the restroom on the plane," or "Call us anytime. Call collect if you want."

But the ride to the airport was silent except for when a car cut in front of us and Mom hit the horn and muttered something I couldn't hear.

We reached the airport an hour before Jeff's plane was supposed to take off. As we stood in the white light of a streetlamp in the parking lot, I saw Mom blinking back tears. I glanced at Jeff, who was busy hauling his suitcase and knapsack out of the trunk of the car. He was whistling.

I took Mom's hand and whispered, "It'll be okay." Then I gave her a quick hug.

Crash. Jeff slammed the trunk shut.

"Okay, let's go!" he cried. "Can I buy some candy from a vending machine, Mom? Please?" (Jeff's one health-food downfall is chocolate.) "And can Dawn and I take our pictures in the photo booth? You get four. We could give two to Dad and you could keep the other two."

"Now, I like that idea," Mom told him. She smiled. It was hard to stay upset around someone who was so cheerful.

We walked into the airport and checked Jeff's suitcase through.

"I hope it actually ends up in California," I said, "and not in Albuquerque like the last time we visited Dad."

"Oh, well," said Jeff mildly, "it'll get to California sometime. And my other stuff should be there by now. Right, Mom?"

"Right."

"Just think," said Jeff as we wandered toward a gift shop. "I'll have my old room back. My room. The room here was never my room."

"Of course it was," I said sharply. "Who'd you share it with?"

Mom put her hand on my shoulder, silently telling me to calm down.

"n.o.body," Jeff replied. "It just wasn't mine the way the one in California is. I can't explain it."

"Let's look in this store," said Mom, not too subtly changing the subject. "Do you need anything for the flight, honey?" she asked my brother.

Jeff looked thoughtful. "I don't think so. I've got two books and my Walkman, and anyway, I'm supposed to go to sleep," he added, glancing slyly at Mom. "But could I get a Mars Bar from a vending machine?" Jeff just loves vending machines and photo booths and those machines that plasticize things for you.

"Sure," replied Mom. "We have time to kill."

We found a corridor, luckily on the way to the gate from which Jeff's flight would leave, that looked like Vending Machine Alley.

"Oh, boy!" exclaimed Jeff.

"I hope you have a lot of change, Mom," I said.

She did.

Jeff bought a Mars Bar and tossed it in his knapsack. Then he and I squeezed into a photo booth and tried to smile and look grown-up as the camera took our pictures. The photos turned out quite well and we gave Mom first dibs on them. After the photo session, we still had time to kill, so Jeff plasticized nearly everything in Mom's wallet.

When he was done, Mom said, "We better get to the gate, kids. They may board you early, Jeff, since you're traveling alone. A stewardess will accompany you on the plane, and we've got to find her."

The gate was a mob scene. An awful lot of people were taking the night flight to Los Angeles. Jeff and I sat down while Mom spoke to a man behind the check-in counter. While we waited for her, I looked at my brother. He was rummaging through his knapsack. My baby brother, I thought, even though he was no more a baby than I was. Jeff and I may have had our share of fights, and Jeff may have been nearly impossible to live with lately, but he was my brother and I was going to miss him.

How could we let him go? Hadn't Jeff and I huddled together in my room in California during Mom and Dad's noisy fights? Hadn't I protected him from bullies and nightmares and imaginary monsters? Hadn't he taught me how to climb ropes when my gym teacher said I was hopeless? How could I grow up the rest of the way without knowing him?

"Don't go," I whispered.

"What?" said Jeff.

"Nothing."

Most families stay together. A lot don't - the parents split up. But in our case, we couldn't even keep the kids together. My insides were aching. And I knew that Mom felt like a failure.

My mother sat down with us to wait, and a few minutes later a stewardess approached. She smiled at Mom, then turned to my brother.

"Jeff Schafer?" she asked.

Jeff jumped to his feet, ready to go.

"I'm Elaine," said the stewardess. "I'll help you board now, and I'll give you any help you might need during the flight. Okay?"

"Sure!"

Mom and I stood up. The hugging and crying started. All us Schafers were hugging, but Mom and I were the only ones crying. No tears fell from Jeff's eyes.

The stewardess watched us with some surprise. I'm sure she didn't know that Jeff had no return ticket. Most boys who leave their families plan to come back.

"Good-bye! 'Bye, Jeff!" Mom and I called as Elaine led him away.

When he was out of sight, I sank onto my chair. I was sobbing right in the middle of that crowded room. So was my mother. We held on to each other for dear life.

Mom tried, for the umpteenth time, to a.s.sure me that Jeff might not think he was going to miss us, but that he really would. I had trouble believing her.

When we calmed down, we linked arms and walked out of the airport together.

Chapter 13.

Pageant Day!

I was dead tired, not having slept much the night before. Even so, I was glad of the busy day ahead. It would be a long one, an exciting one, and I needed that in order to keep my mind off Jeff.

The pageant was to begin at 1:00. It would be held in the auditorium of Stoneybrook High School. But the contestants were supposed to be at the school by 11:30. I had told Mrs. Pike I'd come over to their house around 10:00.

At 9:45, as I was getting ready to leave, I said, "Mom, can't we call Dad and Jeff now? Just to make sure Jeff got there okay?"

"Honey, it's only a quarter to seven in California," she replied. "They'd kill us. Besides, if Jeff didn't get there we'd have had a frantic phone call from your father hours ago."

Mom was sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee. She looked awful. I didn't think she'd slept at all the night before. I wasn't even sure she'd gone to bed, although she was in her nightgown and robe, and her hair was a fright.

"I know," I said. "You're right. Hey, Mom, why don't you come to the pageant today? I know you don't like the idea of them, but this one might be funny - I mean, fun - and you'll know a lot of the girls in it."

"Maybe I will," she replied.

"You could sit with Mr. Spier. He's going because Mary Anne helped Myriah Perkins get ready for the pageant." (My mom and Mary Anne's dad are old friends.) "I'll think about it," said Mom, and she actually smiled. "Now you scoot."

I scooted.

When I rang the Pikes' doorbell, it was answered by Mallory, looking positively murderous.

"I hope you can calm Claire and Margo down," was the way she greeted me. "They are driving us bananas."

From upstairs I could hear, "... that kissed the maiden all forlorn, that milked the cow with the crumpled horn, that tossed the dog ..." mingled with, ". . . I live in a garbage can. I eat all the wor-orms ..."

"Just look at their room," Mallory added ominously as I started up the stairs. "Oh, by the way, Mom said to say she'll be up in a minute to help you."